Saratoga Springs to tap more water from Bog Meadow source to shore up supplies in periods of high demand

Saratoga Springs City Engineer Tim Wales spoke in front of the Bog Meadow's production well at their newest location for a water source for the city of Saratoga Springs. The location is located off Ingersoll Road.Photo Erica Miller 2/6/13 news_MoreWater1_Thurs

Shown is a small monitor observation well to determine how much was they will retain from the areas from the production well once used at Bog Meadow Creek. The location is located off Ingersoll Road.Photo Erica Miller 2/6/13 news_MoreWater2_Thurs

SARATOGA SPRINGS -- In a city known for its water, officials say they are finding enough in the ground to wet residents' whistles for the year to come.

Over the last decade, the city has used an average of 4.2 million gallons of water a day.

At Tuesday night's City Council meeting, City Engineer Tim Wales said the city has "plenty of water," with the capacity to sustain delivering nearly 8 million gallons a day.

But the state Department of Health, which monitors municipal water sources, has been asking the city for the last decade to expand its capacity.

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The city has already drilled one well on a 70-acre parcel near the Wilton border known as Bog Meadow and has plans for three more. Those wells will supply the city with an estimated 1.5 million gallons a year.

The city currently takes surface water from the Bog Meadow area during times of peak demand. The city's primary water source is Loughberry Lake.

In the past, city officials looked at tapping Saratoga Lake, but Wales said that option was estimated to cost $17 million in 2002. Factoring in inflation, that would come to more than $20 million today.

"That wasn't a viable plan," Public Works Commissioner Anthony "Skip" Scirocco said. "All the money we spend gets passed on to the end users."

He said he didn't know what a $17 million project would do to the rates but speculated they would increase "astronomically."

The project at Bog Meadow is expected to cost about $1 million and the water produced may not require treatment at the water treatment plant.

"We would just chlorinate it at the site and pump it right into the system," Scirocco said. That is what is currently done at the city's other two well sites.

Scirocco said the overall cost, though, would depend on what they find while installing the wells. If the water does need to be treated, it would likely be pumped into Loughberry Lake and would make its way into the water treatment plant from there.

Either way, the water from Bog Meadow will increase the city's sustainable capacity to more than 9 million gallons a day, according to Wales.

That will likely satisfy the DOH, but Wales said the agency did not give an exact number the city needs to reach. The DOH gave the city until the end of March 2014 to increase its "safe yield," the amount of water the city could sustainably pump during a drought.

"I think the DOH has been very happy with our progress at this point," Wales said.

The city's "water model" indicates that the city should be able to deliver 11 million gallons of water a day to the city by 2030, based on population estimates and other figures.

Wales said that figure includes the roughly half a million gallons a day the city is contracted to sell to commercial properties in Wilton. The city and Wilton Water Authority also recently entered into a contract to sell a relatively small amount of water to residential properties in Wilton near Bog Meadow, but Wales said drilling wells there has nothing to do with that deal.

"It just happens to be near it," he said.

Both Wales and Scirocco said Bog Meadow could provide the necessary capacity for the city's long-term growth.

"It's turning out better than we thought," Scirocco said.

Eric Hansen, a hydro-geologist who has been working with the city on its Bog Meadow project, estimates the wells will actually supply closer to 2 million gallons a day to the system.

Even if low estimates are the reality, though, officials say the Spa City will have "plenty of water" for years to come.